1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to catalogues raisonnés. More specifically, the invention relates to creating, managing, and manipulating digital catalogues raisonnés.
2. Description of Related Art
A catalogue raisonné is a comprehensive catalogue of an artist's works which has been compiled based on the results of exhaustive research and is often a hallmark publication detailing the artist's career. Those seeking information about the artist's works typically refer to such a catalogue.
Academics, for example, rely on a catalogue raisonné as a key source when researching and writing scholarly works about an artist. Those involved in art sales, such as gallerists, dealers, collectors, and auction houses, also use a catalogue raisonné to define the market for the artist. The wider art community, including museum curators and other art professionals, might use it as well. It is expected that the substance of a catalogue raisonné will inform one about the artist and the artist's work, and be as up to date as possible, at least within the scope of the catalogue raisonné.
An artist's catalogue raisonné may be used to facilitate transactions involving pieces of the artist's work. Particularly, it is used to learn about the work, verify its authenticity, and assess its value relative to both the artist's oeuvre and those of other artists. Without a catalogue raisonné, it can be difficult to obtain such information verified to answer important questions prospective buyers may have regarding a work, such as who was involved in its creation, who its previous owners were, and what museums have shown it. Buyers may shy away from a purchase, or scale back their offers, when their questions go unanswered. Discrepancies, sometimes in the millions of dollars, have been observed between the sale prices of works by artists who have catalogues raisonnés and comparable works by comparable artists who do not.
Traditional catalogues raisonnés generally occupy hundreds of printed pages, contain high-quality reproductions of the works discussed, and include, for each work, detailed text devoted to the work's history, including its full provenance, when and where it was exhibited, and so forth. So even if there is enough interest in an artist to make publishing a catalogue raisonné worthwhile to an editor and a publisher, preparation of the printed catalogue raisonné is expensive and time-consuming. This fact precludes most artists from ever having one of their own. Thus, the art market's existing demand for the relevant information, as evidenced by the high price of print catalogs and the proliferation of art information services, is largely underserved.
Even in instances where a catalogue raisonné is prepared, creators and publishers of the catalogue raisonné typically do not devote additional resources needed to publish the catalogue raisonné digitally or republish updated paper versions. As a result, there exists a fundamental inefficiency in the art market. Traditional, print-based methods for preparing and disseminating catalogues raisonnés result in catalogues that cannot easily be corrected or updated. Thus, a printed catalogue raisonné may not sufficiently satisfy another currently unmet need in the art market—the need for accurate and timely information on artists and their artworks.
Presently-available products permit creation of an electronic database related to an artist's work. Examples include Art Systems, Artbase, ArtTracker, and Masterpiece™ Manager. These products, which are marketed to operators of galleries and museums, include software for managing sales and invoices, consignments, websites, client relations, and advertising. Some of these products simply incorporate basic software for maintaining an artwork inventory. There also are websites that aim to allow artists to create of their own catalogues raisonnés. Such websites are typically designed with an eye towards buying and selling available artwork, rather than preparing and maintaining catalog raisonnés for the purpose of, for example, preserving artists' legacies or cataloguing the physical properties of the artists' works. Collectio.org, a website providing tools for establishing an online inventory of artwork, is one example. Other websites, such as Artnet.com, purport to offer catalogues raisonnés online. What the current products lack is a focus on creating a catalogue raisonné that is accurate and current. Furthermore, although artists should be able to exercise control over much of the information in their catalogues raisonnés, current products do not offer the functionality an individual artist needs, including the abilities to correct, update, and amend existing catalogues. Technical and practical challenges to creating suitable digital catalogues raisonnés include obtaining disparate yet related information, efficiently processing the collected information, and structuring the results in a user interface that the art community finds practical. Accordingly, there exists a need for an improved digital system for creating, maintaining, and accessing a digital catalogue raisonné.